ABSTRACT
The Muslims provided revenue, and anyway the indigenous must have comprised more in the settlers’ eyes than those subject to them in Palestine. The Orthodox Suriani seem to have been the most numerous of the indigenous Christians and in their treatment of them the Latin settlers went further. Special courts, called cours des Syriens, were established for them throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem. The creation of special small-claims courts, existing alongside the higher courts of the kingdom, the rabbinical and episcopal tribunals and the courts of the qadis, was a departure from dhimma legislation, because in a Muslim state all intercommunal cases, and not only the major ones, had to go before a qadi. The Franks seem to have taken the existing offices responsible for collecting market taxes, and to have added to their functions the judgement of minor commercial cases involving members of all the indigenous communities.
